OMG!! A NEWSLETTER!!

THE END IS NIGH!!

yeah yeah.  I know.  It’s been forever.

That doesn’t mean we haven’t been working for you.  Actually, we’ve been working quite a bit, but none of it was anything sexy or exciting (unless you have a fetish for billing software updates…)

Doing Business

Many of you are business owners–some large, some small.  You understand that running a business involves making difficult decisions–and then living with the consequences.  When we started this business over 4 years ago, we did so with the intent of making things easy for our customers.  (Okay… we did it with the hopes of getting filthy stinking rich, but we wanted to get that way by making things easy for our customers.)  One of the choices we made was to go with the Plesk Control Panel.  Plesk wasn’t one of the more popular control panels out there, but we felt it was the best choice for our clients:  powerful, but simple to use.

Plesk was a small company and experienced some growing pains.  Then it got bought up by another company–which also bought up our billing software company.  Now, Parallels is working very hard to make Plesk a single-source solution for webhosting.  But… this has meant more growing pains.  Paul has been working continually with the Parallels team to work out the kinks in the system.   You haven’t seen any of this.  For you, things have been running along like they’re supposed to.   And that’s exactly the way we want it.

A Two Man Cavalry

I had an incident today that–after the fact–made me stop and look at what it is we do.

I got a call from Pat, the local computer fix-it guy.   A local business discovered that their website had been hacked.  Severely.  These people know very little about computers, but they know that they depend on their website to bring them business.   They called their webhost to ask for help, and were told “that’s not our problem, fix it yourself”.  They called Pat, and he called me to say that the was sending their buisiness my way.   I stopped by their office, talked to the owners, and told them that we could have their site cleaned up and transferred in a couple days.  The only hold-up would be getting login information from their current host.

Most webhosts don’t care about your troubles.  If your site is hacked, that’s your problem, not theirs.  They will, however, be quick to turn off your site if they feel that it’s going to hurt their servers.  If they offer any help at all, it’ll certainly cost you a fat hourly fee.

Paul and I don’t work that way.  If your site is hacked or down, you lose business.  We want you to be successful and make a lot of profits (because that means you’ll need a bigger website, and we get to make more profits from that).   Geek Niche gives away thousands of dollars in free tech support every year.   And not just basic stuff; Paul has spent long hours digging through security logs and site code to find diabolical hacks that are affecting our customers.   Other hosts charge up to $100/hour to do this–if they’ll even do it at all.   On more than one occasion, we (okay… mostly Paul) have put in 10 to 15 hours tracking down hacks, cleaning code, patching the holes, and letting the customer know what’s going on.  We’ve spent even more time taking what we’ve learned and protecting our other clients before they fall victim to these hacks.

I’m not saying all this just to brag.  Many of you have never had a website before.  You’ve never had to deal with other webhosts.  So you may not realize that the way we work isn’t normal.  Yes, we’re abnomal–but in a good way!

We’re a small business.  We know all of you by name.  We appreciate that you’ve chosen us to host your websites.  We just hope that the appreciation goes both ways.

A Babe in the Mix

We’ve recently added a new personality to the mix here at Geek Niche.   We now have an accounting department:  and her name is Michelle.  Michelle has graciously volunteered (yes, volunteered) her services as our accounting department.  She loves playing with numbers and actually knows what she’s doing (she has far more experience and knowledge than I do).  She’s already helped to find places where we can reduce costs without affecting service at all.   That makes us very happy.

On the other hand, she’s also going to be our  new billing enforcer.  If you’re naughty and don’t pay your bills, she’ll be the one who’ll come knocking on your (electronic) door.  Oh… did I mention that she likes to wrestle for fun?  We like Michelle:  It means both Paul and I get to play “good cop” on the rare occasion that we have a problem.

Gettin’ Googled

It hasn’t been officially added to the order forms yet, but we’re working on a new service for those of you who are running business sites.  The “Google Pack” sets up a suite of Google applications for your website.  We will create a Google account (which is yours to keep if you should ever be so foolish as to leave us).  This account will include:

• A Google calendar embedded in your website so people can keep up with regular goings on and special events.
• Setting up your business in Google Maps, so you’re included in map searches and business searches
• A custom Google map embedded in your website so people can instantly get directions to your place of business
• Share documents with employees and others with Google Docs
• Instantly communicate with employees, customers, vendors, and others using Google Talk.
• As an add-on:  Creation of a Google AdWords campaing.    Advertise your site on Google for pennies a day.  AdWords sites show up in the side bar of Google searches as well as on other sites showing Google ads.  (Google AdWords requires extra payments directly to Google.  Talk to us about how to budget your advertising.  As  little as $10/month can greatly increase your business exposure.)

If you run a business, Google can provide some very powerful tools to help promote it.  Let us help you make your business grow online.

Referral Program

Just a reminder:  If you refer someone to us, you earn a reward.  If you refer someone to us and they stay with us for at least a year (or pre-pay for an entire year), we’ll take 10% of their bill off of yours.   So, if they’re paying $5/month, you get a 50 cent credit.  If they’re paying $20/month, you get a $2 credit.  Sign up enough friends, and your site will be free.